Category: zerohedge

Via Rystad Energy,

• Middle Eastern national oil companies (NOCs) reinforced their role as a critical buffer in the global energy system through a consistent strategy of capacity expansion and cost reduction, planning to grow investment to about $110 billion in 2026.

• OPEC+ successfully transitioned from reactive production cuts to a sophisticated strategy of controlled optionality, leveraging its spare capacity for economic influence, while facing the primary factor of a projected liquids surplus in 2026.

• The region’s energy sector is tackling structural cost inflation and supply-chain pressures by adopting AI for efficiency and is shifting to a sophisticated capital recycling model through infrastructure monetization, while also advancing large-scale decarbonization projects like CCUS hubs.

In 2025, the Middle East solidified its role as the primary stabilizing force in a fragmented global energy system. While international markets faced geopolitical dislocation and divergent transition pathways, the leading Middle Eastern national oil companies (NOCs) adopted a consistent strategy of sustaining hydrocarbon primacy while systematically reducing costs and carbon intensity. More than $100 billion in upstream capital deployment enabled the NOCs to expand crude spare capacity and accelerate gas development, while selective international acquisitions and portfolio realignments extended their global footprints, strengthening access to advantaged resources across multiple basins. Collectively, these dynamics reinforced the region’s role as a critical buffer against market volatility while shaping the structural economics of global supply. Against this backdrop, we discuss six emerging trends from 2025 which are likely to continue shaping the regional energy sector in 2026.

Investment architecture: Disciplined expansion

The 2025 fiscal year marked a decisive inflection point as regional NOCs reconciled capital discipline with sustained capacity expansion. While Western majors prioritized shareholder returns, Middle Eastern NOCs sanctioned record volumes of long-cycle projects to reinforce structural supply leadership. Approximately $50 billion in conventional projects were sanctioned in 2025, marking three consecutive years of record spending on approvals, alongside unprecedented unconventional gas activity, led by Saudi Aramco’s Jafurah project. This methodical oil and gas expansion across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq reinforces the Gulf’s role as the world’s primary swing producer and provides a sovereign insurance mechanism against market volatility.

Natural gas was a central pillar of regional planning in 2025, with the Middle East capturing nearly a quarter of global upstream gas investment, tallying around $40 billion. The planned development is anchored by Qatar’s North Field expansion, Saudi Arabia’s Jafurah, UAE’s drive for gas self-sufficiency, and Iraq’s flared-gas capturing efforts. This regional pivot to gas serves a dual imperative: meeting rapidly rising domestic power demand from industrial growth and data infrastructure, while displacing liquid fuels to preserve higher-value crude exports.

Looking ahead to 2026, overall investment is set to grow by 10% to about $110 billion as several megaprojects move from final investment decision (FID) to execution. Competition will grow for EPC capacity, liquefied natural gas modules, subsea kit, and skilled labor, driving up cost and schedule risk. Domestic pricing reform and subsidy rationalization will be crucial to unlocking gas?for?power switching at scale and to free crude for export while meeting emerging climate constraints. Lastly, OPEC+ production policy decisions will define crude market dynamics and regional revenue stability ? and by extension, upstream capital outlay or tightening.

OPEC+ management: From cuts to controlled optionality

Throughout 2025, OPEC+ successfully transitioned from reactive production cuts to a sophisticated strategy of controlled optionality. This shift reflected an effort to reclaim market share from the Americas ? specifically, the US, Brazil, Guyana, and Canada ? while defending a critical price floor. By December 2025, the alliance had implemented a modest production increase of 137,000 barrels per day, to be followed by a pause in the first quarter of 2026, allowing the group to monetize capacity buffers when fundamentals were favorable while retaining flexibility for seasonal demand lulls. The maneuver signaled that OPEC+ had moved beyond simple volume management to using its massive spare capacity as a tool for economic leverage and market share diplomacy.

The primary factor to watch for in 2026 is a projected liquids surplus of over 3 million bpd, which could force the group to choose between defending a price floor or aggressively pursuing market share. The group’s response to a potential shale production plateau, shifting US trade policy, and rising buyer power from India and others, will determine whether 2026 is characterized by managed stability or renewed competition.

Aditya Saraswat, Research Director MENA

OPEC+ also will launch an independent audit of its member states’ production capacities that will redefine 2027 baselines and serve as a litmus test for alliance cohesion. High-investment members including UAE and Saudi Arabia likely will seek formal recognition of their expanded capacities during this assessment, as well as higher quotas.

Operational pressures: Supply chains, inflation, and AI adoption

Cost inflation in the Middle East energy sector had settled into a structurally higher baseline by 2025, with supply-chain costs rising at roughly 4% annually over five years and operating expenditure increasing 6-7% per year due to production growth, aging assets, and operational complexity. As mature and marginal fields claim a growing share of production, the system tilts toward more intervention-intensive and higher-cost barrels.

Inflation in 2025 was broad-based but uneven, hitting execution-heavy segments hardest. Globally, offshore vessel day rates climbed amid strong upstream demand and preference for high-spec tonnage, but the Middle East registered the sharpest increases as NOCs advanced ambitious offshore programs. Subsea costs surged, as brownfield-driven demand for specialized equipment led to limited regional supply and long lead times. Fabrication yard pricing stayed elevated, despite easing costs of materials and labor, due to tight Asian hub capacity and embedded risk premiums. Land rigs and equipment markets firmed on high utilization and robust order books, with suppliers retaining input-cost relief to safeguard margins via lump-sum contracts.

Short-lived tariff shocks created episodic volatility but did not shift the core trajectory, which was marked by sustained investments, execution capacity competition, and rising project complexity. At the same time, maturing AI technology went from pilots to industrial-scale adoption in key practices such as predictive maintenance, autonomous drilling, and production and emissions optimization, with efficiency gains helping offset cost inflation.

Cost discipline in 2026 will entail contracts with escalation indices and risk-sharing, portfolio rephasing to dodge peaks in constrained categories, and deeper ties with integrated EPCs and local joint ventures for bundled services. AI deployment will be crucial, unlocking productivity to preserve the region’s cost advantages in megaproject execution.

Portfolio engineering: Capital recycling and infrastructure monetization

Middle Eastern NOCs transitioned in 2025 to a sophisticated capital recycling model, leveraging infrastructure monetization and over $22 billion in lease-and-leaseback deals to fund aggressive expansions while retaining operational control.

ADNOC, via its XRG arm, advanced its global gas strategy in 2025 with the acquisition of equity stakes in the Caspian region’s Southern Gas Corridor, following equity deals in 2024 involving Rio Grande LNG, in the US, and Mozambique’s Area 4, complemented by an $11 billion commitment to its Hail and Ghasha sour gas development. Also in 2025, QatarEnergy accelerated its 142 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) by 2030 vision by advancing the North Field West project and securing a massive LNG shipping fleet. Saudi Aramco executed an $11 billion monetization of Jafurah midstream assets while scaling its international LNG footprint through MidOcean Energy. These maneuvers transitioned infrastructure from static cost centers to liquidity engines, effectively hedging against service inflation and funding low-carbon transition programs.

Heading into 2026, the strategy shifts toward digital technologies and equity globalization. Key developments will include QatarEnergy finalizing international partnerships for the North Field West project, ADNOC’s potential consolidation of Mubadala’s energy portfolio, and KUFPEC’s targeted equity expansion into North American gas. The new frontier is data-as-an-asset, led by Aramco’s HUMAIN AI initiative, which seeks to commercialize proprietary seismic and digital-twin data into tradable energy data hubs.

Success in 2026 will hinge on sustaining institutional investor appetite for these “yield plus growth” assets while balancing domestic decarbonization mandates with rapidly expanding global equity footprints.

Geopolitical hedging and operational resilience

For Middle Eastern producers in 2025, energy infrastructure served as both economic asset and diplomatic instrument amid US-China competition, Iranian supply uncertainty, and Red Sea security risks. Investments in bypass routes such as Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, strategic storage in the UAE, and Omani export alternatives were designed to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz while maintaining dollar pricing and diversified security partnerships.

Iranian exports, oscillating from around 1.5 million to 2 million barrels per day, functioned both as a competitive source of barrels and an embedded risk premium of roughly $3-5 per barrel in global pricing. Long?term supply contracts into China and equity in Asian downstream systems deepened commercial interdependence without displacing US security ties, illustrating a hedging strategy that maximizes flexibility rather than alliance exclusivity.

Asia has become a central pillar of the Middle East energy equation. After the 2020 pandemic, while western players were busy balancing low-carbon and conventional investment priorities, Asian companies expanded equity positions and supply chain capacity in the region. By 2025, Chinese and Southeast Asian service firms represented around 15% of the region’s active supplier base, a share that continues to rise as these players deliver the compressed margins required to secure new bids. In markets such as Iraq, Asian companies, mostly Chinese, now account for a leading share of equity production. This growing operating presence supports an increasingly consolidated ecosystem led by CNPC, CNOOC, Sinopec, and their associated service providers. While alternatives exist, their cost-competitiveness is limited, effectively embedding Chinese participation across upstream development and contracting activities.

In 2026, Middle East energy stability hinges on competitive recalibration. Geopolitical volatility, driven by the renewed and aggressive US energy policies, Red Sea insecurity, and shifting Iran ties, will force producers to harden infrastructure and secure alternative export routes. OPEC+ cohesion faces tests from Russian production and growing buyer leverage in India. Amid this multipolar friction, success depends on maintaining operational flexibility and strategic hedging. Producers will prioritize extracting maximum value from fragmented global relationships while ensuring uninterrupted flows through a risk-embedded energy landscape.

Decarbonization: From pilots to commercial-scale partnerships

In 2025, Middle East decarbonization shifted from aspiration to execution. NOCs embedded emissions management in core operations via technologies including hub-based carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), methane abatement, and oilfield electrification using nuclear and solar power. Partnerships like Saudi Aramco’s Jubail CCS hub, ADNOC’s Habshan project, and ENEC’s small modular reactor (SMR) collaborations exemplified pragmatic approaches to energy transition, taking decarbonization from goals to measurable metrics.

Saudi Aramco’s 50% stake in the Blue Hydrogen Industrial Gases Company joint venture integrated blue hydrogen and CCS into Jubail’s industrial base, while ADNOC, Aramco, and partners advanced multimillion-tonne hub-based CCUS for LNG, hydrogen, steel, and chemicals infrastructure.

Hydrogen strategies grew selective in 2025, sidelining export-only models for cluster-based CCS, refining, and ammonia projects, while ADNOC’s XRG rebrand to broader “energy solutions” aligned with data-center and firm power demand.

The focus in 2026 will be on commercial viability amid material inflation, along with increased drilling efficiency and emissions reduction through AI. We expect to see investment decisions on CCUS projects, hydrogen to consolidate around industrial demand, and a solar-led renewables rollout that will transform the region’s power sector and increase demand for grid-integrated storage. On the sustainability front, the need to enhance transparency around CO2 and CH4 emissions will grow. The test for Middle Eastern NOCs will be scaling incremental, infrastructure-led transition economically without eroding production or competitiveness, delivering durability even as the region’s emissions intensity declines.

The Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value on the secondary market, bottomed one year ago and has been rising ever since.

Prices in the secondary market are up 2.1% over the last 24 months and nearly 9% over the last 12 months. Prices remain well below the peaks seen during the Covid-era free-money period.

Bloomberg’s Allegra Catelli shed color on her view of why used watch demand is ticking higher: 

• The rally is being driven by dress watches and smaller, jewelry-style pieces, reflecting fashion cues from celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Timothée Chalamet, as well as a generational wealth transfer.

• Gen Z collectors are favoring elegance, uniqueness, and smaller case sizes over the once-dominant steel sports models. This shift is also blurring traditional gender norms, with men gravitating to smaller precious-metal watches and women more open to bolder designs.

Critical research for the broader watch industry:

• Winding Up For A Comeback: UBS Eyes Rolex Recovery Cycle

• Used Rolex Demand Soars On Tariff Uncertainty

• Secondhand Gold Rolex Demand Rises As Yellow Metal Hits Record

• Have You Checked Used Rolex Prices?

Fun reads:

• These Are The Best Military And Intelligence Unit Watches

• Axis Of Upheaval: Military Watches Of Russia & China

“The market for chunkier sports models from brands like Rolex has been on a roller coaster over the past few years, and it feels like buyers have become disillusioned,” Christy Davis, co-founder of Subdial, told Bloomberg.

Davis said younger consumers are “exploring more unique watches,” adding that the traditional gender divide is cracking, with women increasingly comfortable wearing larger, bolder designs and men gravitating toward smaller faces and precious-metal pieces.

Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

Let me get to the punch line of my view on the financial markets for 2026. The remarkable equity bull run of the past couple of years is unlikely to stall, at least not in the first half of 2026. Corrections are inevitable, and we are indeed likely in an asset bubble.

But in the coming months, the benefits of President Donald Trump’s policy initiatives will go into full swing. The U.S. economy has been accelerating, with 4.3 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the third quarter following 3.8 percent in the second quarter of 2025. Strong GDP growth should continue because of tax cuts, tariff easing, and lower interest rates.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, like central banks around the world, is easing monetary and financial conditions, ensuring that global liquidity will remain high. Until liquidity cracks, the markets won’t, and the world’s national governments have massive incentives in place—and massive firepower—to ensure that this doesn’t happen anytime soon.

Hopefully, this all benefits Main Street, which has struggled in what a year ago I called “the clash of the Dollar General versus Ferrari economies.” Either way, Wall Street and asset values are likely to continue going strong, at least for now.

I have four main investment themes heading into 2026: geopolitics (wars and rumors of war), artificial intelligence (AI) and tech generally, the so-called debasement trade, and American Renaissance.

Geopolitics: Wars and Rumors of War

Every major country is gearing up for war and conflict, a fact that isn’t being covered enough in mainstream media. Both the public sector (such as the government) and the private sector are making major investments in rearmament, defense, domestic supply chains, and national security generally.

There are multiple flashpoints of conflict around the world, including Ukraine, Taiwan, Venezuela, Colombia, Iran, and numerous points in the Middle East. Even if we get a peace deal for Ukraine, and with Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela, that won’t change this underlying reality.

This dangerous fact is not great for our society or humanity as a whole, but it will benefit both defense industry stocks and, if things go badly, defensive consumer names as well. Central banks are continuing to stockpile gold and other precious metals, and supplies are constrained. Resource nationalism favors commodities and domestic resource companies, including mining and refining of strategic resources such as silver, platinum, and a long list of rare-earth elements.

AI Will Change Everything

2026 will be the year when productivity improvements from AI implementation will finally begin to show in corporate profits. But the fact that AI will succeed doesn’t mean investing in it will. Picking the winners from the losers will be challenging.

The history of revolutionary technology breakthroughs is instructive here. In the 19th century, railroads fundamentally changed economies, warfare, and societies around the world. Still, most railroad companies failed, including some that raised millions of dollars in capital but never laid one mile of track before going bankrupt. There were about 2,000 automobile companies in the first half of the 20th century; only a handful survived. The aggregate profits investors have made on airlines since Kitty Hawk are about zero.

What I like are the ancillary and enabling parts of the AI economy, such as electrical grid upgrades to provide for all the power capacity needed, construction, data centers, small nuclear plant development, and the like. This infrastructure buildout is good for the United States, and this approach is not as expensive as trying to predict the AI winners and losers among the already expensive chip companies (Nvidia, TSMC, etc.) and hyperscalers (Google, Oracle, etc.) investing hundreds of billions of dollars and recycling much of back into one another in a closed loop that increasing resembles a Ponzi scheme.

The Debasement Trade

Persistent government deficits and mind-boggling levels of national debt aren’t being addressed, either in the United States or anywhere among the major economies. The United States now has $38 trillion of debt at the federal level alone. Interest of more than $1 trillion on this debt means that debt levels will grow as the only means of refinancing existing debt, covering billion-dollar deficits, and paying interest.

The U.S. government can’t default and can’t tax its debt away, so it will resort to inflation to reduce its cost in real terms. The Federal Reserve and other central banks are easing monetary and financial conditions—spiking the proverbial punchbowl—to keep the party rolling. Rates are coming down around the world, and quantitative easing (by whatever name is used) is flooding liquidity into the system. These factors will fuel renewed inflation if the economy continues to grow as expected.

Holding cash with falling interest rates will mean losing purchasing power. The U.S. dollar has lost about 20 percent of its purchasing power since 2020, and approximately 40 percent since 2000, and there is more debasement to come. Equities mostly keep up with inflation, but it is the real assets—again, gold, metals, commodities, and real estate—that will perform best in this environment.

American Renaissance 

Trump’s American renewal is just getting underway. The long list of policy moves, including deregulation of various industries, will benefit wide swaths of the economy, including the U.S. industrial manufacturing base, technology companies and enablers, energy companies, infrastructure of all sorts, and mining.

As for crypto, unless you’re a trader and know what you’re doing, the only thing I’m positive about as a longer-term investment is bitcoin (BTC), which has proven to be dominant among digital tokens and in a class all its own. Still, there are near-term headwinds to BTC, and long-term threats from quantum computing and other developments.

Having said all that, “black swan” surprises can turn everything upside down. We saw stock indexes fall by double-digit percentages around “Liberation Day” in mid-2025 because of outsized fears of tariff wars. But once investors were able to absorb the likely impact, the markets then bounced back stronger. One of the biggest risks to the market is a credit crisis arising from these high levels of government debt. So it is always a good idea to have some liquidity and some gold or other hard assets that do well in shocks or downturns.

The Trump administration has mulled sending lump sum payments to Greenlanders of up to $100,000 in exchange for their vote to secede from Denmark and join the United States, Reuters reports, citing four sources familiar with the matter.

The exact dollar figure and logistics of any payments are unclear, however US officials, including White House aides, have floated payments ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person to residents of the overseas territory of Denmark with a population of 57,000 people – despite Copenhagen’s insistence that Greenland is not for sale. The move would cost at most $5.7 billion – about what the US sends Israel and Egypt on an annual basis. 

One of the sources familiar with White House deliberations said the internal discussions regarding lump sum payments were not necessarily new. However, that person said, they had gotten more serious in recent days, and aides were entertaining higher values, with a $100,000-per-person payment – which would result in a total payment of almost $6 billion – a real possibility.

Many details of any potential payments were unclear, such as when and how they would be doled out if the Trump administration pursued that route or what exactly would be expected of the Greenlanders in exchange. The White House has said military intervention is possible, though officials have also said the U.S. prefers buying the island or otherwise acquiring it through diplomatic means. -Reuters

The proposed payments are one of several plans under discussion by the White House for acquiring Greenland – including the use of the US military – to take control of the island whose own population has repeatedly debated its own independence and economic dependence on Denmark. 

“Enough is enough … No more fantasies about annexation,” said Greenland’s PM Jens-Frederik Neilsen in a Sunday Facebook post after US President Donald Trump repeated his intention to acquire the island during interviews with reporters.

European leaders have responded to Trump’s comments with disdain. On Tuesday, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain and Denmark issued a joint statement declaring that only Greenland and Denmark can decide what happens.

Trump has given several reasons for the need to acquire Greenland – including that it is rich in minerals needed for military applications, and that the Western Hemisphere needs to be under the geopolitical influence of Washington. 

“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark isn’t going to be able to do it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, adding “It’s so strategic.”

One Reuters source said that White House aides were eager to carry over the momentum from the Maduro operation – in which US forces captured the Venezuelan leader and his wife over the weekend.

Another option under discussion is trying to enter into a type of agreement with the island called a Compact of Free Association (COFA) – which have only ever been extended to small island nations including Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau – in which the US government will provide many essential services such as mail delivery and military protection in exchange for the ability to operate freely in COFA countries and trade with the US largely duty free. 

To do this, Greenland would likely need to separate from Denmark. 

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

A Belgian court on Wednesday sentenced a woman to seven years in prison after rejecting claims that early menopause, stress, and a household overrun by 60 chihuahuas explained months of sadistic abuse that resulted in her husband being locked up and tortured for weeks on end.

The court heard how the 48-year-old Belgian male victim escaped from his home in Grobbendonk on March 18, 2025, barefoot and wearing only underwear and a T-shirt, when he fled a dog kennel where his wife, Anna V., had locked him. He staggered to a nearby home and knocked on a kitchen window, begging for help.

“He had used his last bit of strength to escape. The man was completely disoriented,” public prosecutor Hanne Hendrickx told the court as cited by HLN, explaining that a passing cyclist recognized the victim as his neighbor and helped police establish his identity.

According to the prosecution, the man had been regularly beaten, starved, humiliated, and imprisoned. “Photos show that at the beginning of the relationship, he was a strong, healthy man. In photos taken after the fact, we see a burned skeleton. There wasn’t much left of the victim,” Hendrickx said.

The defendant initially told police and emergency services that her husband was depressed and harming himself, a claim briefly accepted. She was even allowed to sit with him in the ambulance until a paramedic heard her whisper, “You have to be quiet,” and noticed the victim becoming visibly anxious. She was then removed from the ambulance and arrested.

The couple had only married in August 2024.

Investigators concluded the man had been beaten with fists and household objects, including a chair and a cooking pot, and was kicked when he fell to the floor. He was forced to clean the excrement of around 60 chihuahuas using bleach, but only barefoot because his wife had hidden his shoes, causing corrosive wounds. A camera had been installed to ensure he worked continuously.

According to Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, the man was repeatedly deprived of his liberty, locked several times in a garden shed and a dog kennel, and once in a dark cellar without food or water. “Fourteen days before his escape, she also doused him with boiling water because two dogs had died and, according to her, it was his fault,” Hendrickx said.

Video evidence found during the investigation showed the defendant filming and laughing at her husband’s humiliation. Freddy Mols, the victim’s lawyer, told the court, “My client narrowly escaped death. He endured terrible things for a year. He was found suffering from dehydration and malnutrition, and was completely disoriented.

Prosecutors demanded an eight-year sentence, and while defense lawyer Romy Geysen called it “by far the most horrific case I’ve ever received,” she argued that her client’s mental state had changed since the abuse. She cited financial stress, the growing number of dogs in the household, and hormonal changes. “Moreover, she was in early menopause, which meant she couldn’t control herself,” Geysen told the court.

Speaking briefly, the defendant said, “I was so tired. I couldn’t handle it anymore, and I took it out on him. I now realize what I did to him. That should never have happened.”

The judge dismissed the mitigating remarks and sentenced the defendant to seven years in prison. She had also previously been fined €3,600 for the mistreatment of the dogs.

The victim’s lawyer has also requested €10,000 in damages to help with any therapy that may be needed in the future.

Read more here….

An estimated 453,230 accounts were shut down in the United Kingdom in the last year, a stunning figure that has drawn outrage from the country’s leading conservative lawmaker.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called the shocking figure “appalling” and slammed European rules that he believes “makes it cheaper for banks to close accounts over unusual transactions.” Farage, who was elected to the British Parliament in 2024 and leads the conservative populist Reform Party, is no stranger to debanking, having had his accounts closed by Coutts in 2023.

So what’s the banks’ excuse? “Financial crime reasons,” they said, according to documents obtained by The Telegraph under Freedom of Information rules.

The Telegraph reports:

It comes ahead of the introduction of new rules which will force lenders to give customers longer before they close accounts – at least 90 days’ notice – as well as offer clearer explanations of why they shut the accounts.

But the requirements will only apply to accounts opened after April 28 this year and will be subject to exemptions to allow banks to comply with financial crime rules.Financial institutions are allowed to close accounts for commercial reasons, and if they suspect criminal activity. There is no legal right to a bank account in the UK, unlike in countries such as France and Belgium.

Banks have faced criticism over their failure to explain to customers exactly why accounts have been closed. This is often blamed on anti-money laundering and other financial crime rules which lenders must follow.

Nonetheless, British officials defend closing the accounts, claiming they were shut down after a thorough review.

“Banks must comply with strict legal and regulatory requirements in terms of verifying customers and preventing financial crime. As a result, a small proportion of accounts are closed, but only after extensive review and investigation,” a UK government spokesperson told The Telegraph.

“Fighting financial crime is one of our priorities. Fraud makes up over 40 pc of crime in the UK, robbing people of their hard-earned money,” An FCA spokesman said in a separate statement.

“It’s important banks and building societies play their part, including closing accounts they have suspicions about. Only a tiny fraction of accounts are closed – and we expect firms to act proportionately and treat customers fairly.”

While British officials don’t appear to see the problem with the surging number of closed bank accounts, critics across the pond in the United States see the escalating situation as a cautionary tale.

Adam Smith Institute’s Maxwell Marlow told The Telegraph: “The scourge of debanking continues to blight the British public and significantly impacts the Square Mile.”“Our finance system thrives through freedom – it is why we were the centre of global capitalism for so long, and we became rich from it. If we choose to reject these principles by ignoring this issue, our liberties and prosperity will be punished collectively,” Marlow added.

Across the pond – in August, President Donald Trump took a series of actions to thwart “debanking,” which was pervasive during the Biden administration, signing an executive order aimed at preventing financial institutions from denying services based on customers’ political or religious beliefs.

The order, titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” directs federal regulators to scrutinize banks for past or present policies that may have encouraged discriminatory practices and to impose remedies such as fines or consent decrees where violations are found.

The order also requires the removal of “reputational risk” considerations from supervisory guidance, which the administration argues have been used to pressure banks into restricting access for certain lawful industries or individuals.

Authored by Colin Todhunter via Off-Guardian.org,

Supermarket shelves have never been fuller, yet diets have become poorer. Across the world, food systems praised for their productivity now deliver an abundance of calories alongside widespread micronutrient deficiency, ecological collapse and rural precarity.

This is the outcome of an agricultural model that equates food security with yield and mass production with nourishment. Sustained by billions in subsidies, industrial agriculture increasingly resembles a welfare state for agribusiness and retail giants whose profits depend on public money.

Nutritional decline

Corporate-driven industrial agriculture claims to feed the world but too often delivers empty calories while starving populations of nutrients. Consider that high-yield rice produces empty calories while becoming nutritionally impoverished. Since the 1960s, the concentration of zinc and iron in wheat and rice in India has fallen by 30 to 45%. In contrast, millets and pulses deliver far higher levels of protein, zinc and iron per square inch.

This is not unique to India: Rothamsted Research in the UK has evaluated the mineral concentration of archived wheat grain and soil samples from the Broadbalk Wheat Experiment. The experiment began in 1843, and their findings show significant decreasing trends in the concentrations of zinc, copper, iron and magnesium in wheat grain since the 1960s.

At the same time, nutritionally dense millet acreage in India has declined by 60% over the last seven decades. The decline is a result of structural shifts in Indian agriculture following the Green Revolution.

In the UK, the logic is similar, albeit expressed differently. Ultra-processed foods dominate, monocultures deplete soil and calories are abundant while nutrition is undermined. Obesity coexists with micronutrient deficiencies; grass-fed livestock and diverse rotations have largely been replaced by input-intensive systems, while supermarkets dictate production priorities and shape farming.

Industry PR frequently attempts to justify its role by implying the world would starve without its seeds and chemicals. The industry justifies this claim through the enduring myth of the Green Revolution; a narrative Prof. Glenn Stone and others have effectively debunked. The claim that industrial seeds ‘saved’ India from mass starvation, for instance, is less history than PR.

In reality, the Green Revolution represented a pivot towards input-intensive farming that displaced existing productivity gains in favour of a model that mandated dependency on proprietary seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides supplied by an increasingly concentrated global industry.

Displacement and precarity

When traditional farming is destabilised through state withdrawal, corporate inputs, global supply chains and monocultures, it becomes financially unviable for many farmers. Rural communities are removed from the soil. In India, this displacement is leveraged as part of a broader neoliberal strategy, clearing land for industrial-scale corporate agriculture.

In rural Britain, young people leave for cities as rural life becomes economically untenable and villages lose schools, healthcare and transport. Meanwhile, farmers rely heavily on subsidies, rural development grants and agri-environment schemes.

These payments mainly stabilise industrial supply chains and supermarket profits. In the UK, more than half of farm income comes from subsidies rather than market sales and larger farms disproportionately capture payments. In effect, subsidies sustain monocultures and high-volume production for supermarkets.

UK subsidies like the Basic Payment Scheme and its successors provide a non-market floor for farm income. They therefore function as an indirect subsidy for retail giants. By covering the farmer’s basic survival costs, the taxpayer effectively lowers the break-even point for producers, allowing supermarkets to use their purchasing power to negotiate farm-gate prices that are frequently below the actual cost of production.

So, the taxpayer pays to keep the farm viable, only for the supermarket to extract the resulting value through suppressed prices and high retail margins.

Mugging the public

These national subsidy regimes are embedded within a transnational agricultural input economy dominated by a small number of food retail, agrochemical and seed corporations, including firms such as Bayer and Syngenta, which sell proprietary seeds and chemicals at prices the farmer could not otherwise afford.

In the UK, publicly supported farm incomes stabilise demand for proprietary seeds, pesticides and fertilisers integrated into supermarket-led supply chains, ensuring predictable markets for input suppliers even as farm-gate prices are driven down.

The farmer is squeezed by both sides (inputs and retail), and although the mechanisms might differ per country, the underlying logic is consistent: the state absorbs risk while private firms profit from farmer dependence on proprietary inputs and chemically intensive production systems. We see a globally integrated system of public risk management for agribusiness.

While India still (however precariously) attempts to buffer the producer (through mechanisms like the Minimum Support Price for crop assurance and the Public Distribution System to stabilise consumer costs), the UK system has been fully utilised to de-risk the balance sheets of private giants.

The British public is being ‘mugged’ twice: once at the tax office and again at the checkout. At the same time, the state is subsidising a third ‘mugging’: a taxpayer-funded public health collapse. By bankrolling volume over nutrition, the government pays corporations to manufacture a health crisis, then taxes the public to treat the fallout. The taxpayer funds the hollow calories, the supermarket margins and the resulting chronic diseases whose cost falls on the NHS.

Welfare scroungers

The media too often vilifies the poor (whether families in the UK or struggling farmers in India) for needing public support. However, the biggest ‘scroungers’ are not families supposedly ‘fiddling the system’ but the shareholders of retail and input corporations whose profit margins are underwritten by public money.

In the UK, the agricultural sector is ensnared in a subsidy trap that functions as a taxpayer-funded life-support system for corporate retail. While the annual farming budget has remained largely stagnant at £2.4 billion since 2007 (effectively a significant cut when adjusted for inflation) it remains the only thing standing between many British farmers and bankruptcy.

According to Defra’s 2024/25 statistics, these payments now account for 30% to 55% of farm business income. Without this public intervention, the majority of UK farms would operate at a net loss. This means that the current market price for food is a policy choice to protect the margins of retail giants such as Tesco, which recently reported an adjusted operating profit of £3.13 billion.

In India, every time a farmer scans their fingerprint to purchase a subsidised bag of fertiliser, they trigger a transfer of public funds to chemical manufacturers. According to policy analyst Devinder Sharma (in numerous articles in The Tribune newspaper), by fixing the retail price of urea while guaranteeing cost recovery, the government has created a low-risk environment for input-intensive agriculture.

The average Indian agricultural household earns just ₹10,218 ($113) per month, while chemical companies—buffered by ₹1.91 lakh crore ($23 billion) in public funds—remain highly profitable.

Whether through the stagnant grants of the UK or the biometric pipelines of India, the state has become the ultimate guarantor of a high-input, high-cost agricultural model that would otherwise be commercially unsustainable for producers.

Towards a new system

In the UK, breaking this model requires a structural dismantling of the ‘supermarket state’. A genuine transition would necessitate land reform that decouples land value from real estate speculation alongside a strengthened retail code that mandates a minimum producer share of the retail price, ensuring value is not siphoned off by shareholders before it leaves the farm gate.

The current predatory model is a conscious political choice. An alternative is required—one rooted in community resilience, ecological health and nutritional sufficiency rather than corporate extraction. This shift is already visible in fragments of resistance emerging in both India and the UK.

In India, the revival of millet cultivation in Odisha demonstrates how subsidies can be reclaimed for social justice. By linking minimum support prices (MSPs) to decentralised procurement and school meal programmes, the state has transformed millets from ‘forgotten foods’ into pillars of nutrition and soil health.

In the UK, community-supported agriculture, seed-saving networks and local co-operatives act as quiet secessions from the corporate supply chain. While inheritance tax and market consolidation threaten land access, these projects prioritise health per acre and local autonomy, ensuring that the value created by the soil remains within the community rather than being siphoned off to retail headquarters.

The path forward requires a fundamental decoupling of food from the logic of extraction. This means a transition from a state that subsidises shareholder dividends to one that invests in soil sovereignty, small-scale farming and the long-term health of its people.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is absolutely freaked out about Donald Trump, and says the ‘world order’ is at risk of disintegrating into a “den of robbers” where the unscrupulous simply take what they want. 

Wait, you mean: 

– Like Ukrainian oligarchs busted embezzling $100M IN US taxpayer money (for starters)?

– Like the Panama papers?

– Like the Siemens bribery scandal where German officials took $1.4 billion to secure contracts?

– Like the UK’s BAE Systems arms scandal in which millions in bribes made their way to Saudi officials?

– How about the Danske Bank money laundering scandal? 

– Or the worldwide pandemic industrial fraud complex? 

We’ll give you a minute to recover…

Steinmeier’s comments appeared to refer to actions such as Trump’s ousting of Venezeula’s dictator president Nicolas Maduro over the weekend – which the Sour Kraut (⌐■_■) said constituted an attack on global democracy ‘like never before.’ Because whatever you think of Maduro or Trump plucking him out of bed, he was definitely a poster child for democracy, right?

Next, Steinmeier turned his ire towards Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine as a watershed – with Trump’s behavior representing a second historic ‘rupture.’

“It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers,” he said, adding that active intervention was needed in threatening situations – and that countries such as Brazil and India must be convinced to protect and maintain the world order. 

Hey Frank, why does Germany shut down public pools in the summer these days? Is it because you let a bunch of people in who “take whatever they want?”  

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The Swedish Migration Board, the authority charged with deciding who may live in Sweden and under what conditions, has been described by internal sources as an organization largely staffed by personnel with a migration background who often speak their own languages and seek to prioritize those from their own country of origin to establish a greater cultural foothold in Sweden.

Swedish news outlet Samnytt spoke to long-serving employees of the organization who blew the whistle on its structural weaknesses and its inability to adhere to the agency’s requirement for neutrality on migration policy.

“Currently, the majority of the staff have a background other than Swedish. Many do not even have Swedish citizenship. And they speak their own language with their own group,” said one source who has worked within the authority for several decades and is still employed there.

They explained that the authority employs around 6,000 people and largely operates in open-plan offices, where employees are free to choose where they sit. In practice, this has led to, ironically, a distinct lack of integration.

“Kurds normally sit together with other Kurds, even if there are different clans among the Kurds, Somalis sit with other Somalis, and Syrians with other Syrians, and so on,” the source said.

“What affects us the most is that everyone speaks their own language, meaning you don’t understand what is said between groups and employees,” they added.

Earlier attempts to require Swedish as the working language within the authority have reportedly been abandoned. Instead, according to Samnytt’s source, parallel linguistic environments have become normalized within the very institution responsible for assessing integration, residency, and citizenship.

“This not only affects language, that people don’t understand each other or what is being said, but it also causes different groups to form within the authority, clans that are involved in bringing their own clan members or relatives from their home countries here. They have brought the Middle Eastern clan mentality into the authority,” the source said.

The Migration Board’s transformation is described as having accelerated during the 2015 migration crisis, when Sweden received more asylum seekers than its system was designed to handle. During that period, the authority’s role shifted from neutral administrator of the law to an increasingly politicized actor.

The source estimates that around 35 percent of employees at the Migration Board are Muslim and described a noticeable change following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“Many may have been more moderate Muslims, but after Oct. 7 you could see that more and more Muslim women started wearing the hijab,” the source said. “Songs about ‘from the river to the sea’ could also be heard from the coffee room inside the Migration Board,” the source said.

Employees who object to this culture or raise concerns internally are reportedly ostracized and accused of disloyalty. “What has become unpleasant is that we who feel that things are not going right at the authority, and it is usually Swedes, have to talk behind closed doors so that no one hears,” Samnytt was told.

“You are removed from your position, perhaps placed in the reception,” the source said when asked what happens if an employee speaks openly about their concerns. “It is difficult to fire someone here, since the union is quite strong, but you are simply removed from influence, and all opportunities for a career within the authority disappear.”

When asked what message should be sent to responsible politicians, the source was unequivocal. “Shut down the entire agency. It can’t be changed,” they said.

“If you change the name or transfer responsibility to other agencies, the same people will follow. It will be the same thing again. If you want to change this, you have to take a completely new approach, with new people.”

The allegations come amid previous controversies surrounding the Migration Board. In February 2024, a 30-year-old Iraqi man employed as an administrator at the authority was reported to police on suspicion of data breaches, misconduct, and accepting bribes. According to documents seen by Samnytt, the man may have earned millions of kronor by selling residence permits to other migrants.

The agency has also faced criticism for social media posts explaining how asylum seekers could go back on holiday to countries they claimed to have fled.

The full exposé can be read in full here.

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,

With the U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in a bold Jan. 3 military raid and a large naval force still prowling the southern Caribbean to ensure that Maduro’s successors cooperate with the Trump administration, other subtle, but key, developments in the region can be overlooked.

Among under-the-wire events is a December 2025 agreement between the United States and Venezuela’s neighbor, Guyana. That agreement could have profound implications, not only in the immediate context of unfolding events in Venezuela, but also for the long-term execution of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, unveiled in November 2025 by U.S. President Donald Trump.

A U.S. delegation led by senior Pentagon adviser Patrick Weaver and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of War Joseph Humire met with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali in the nation’s capital, Georgetown, on Dec. 9.

Ali told Guyanese media outlets that the nations had signed a statement of intent to “expand joint military cooperation,” a process that will be “evolving … in the coming months.” He stated that there “will be greater discussions on more levels of cooperation and the integration of [the two countries’] work.”

The statement of intent is not a formal mutual defense treaty, he said, calling it a “reinforcement” of long-term training and collaboration between the United States and Guyana.

But such a pact could be on the table, Ali hinted, referring to the U.S. military effort dubbed Operation Southern Spear.

“The U.S. government now is launching what they call the Southern Spear of security,” he said. “They are now coming up with a strategy for the Western Hemisphere, and the U.S. government is to invest more and pay attention more to the [Caribbean] and Western Hemisphere.”

Southern Spear has been in the spotlight off Venezuela since September. The USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, and the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship, are the most visible components of the campaign that destroyed drug-smuggling speedboats, imposed a selective blockade on sanctioned oil tankers, and led to the Jan. 3 U.S. military operation that captured Maduro.

Guyana has a “growing role” in implementing that strategy, State Department principal deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a Jan. 6 statement.

The commitment to “deepening security cooperation with Guyana to address shared challenges” was affirmed during a Jan. 6 phone call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ali, Pigott said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali stand for a photo opportunity as they meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 24, 2025. Stefan Jeremiah/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Territorial Dispute

A former British colony, Idaho-sized Guyana is rich in minerals, has extensive offshore oil deposits, is perched on eastern Caribbean sea lanes, and is embroiled in an almost 200-year-old border dispute with Venezuela, used by the Maduro regime as an excuse to menace its sparsely populated neighbor with naval intrusions and troop buildups.

Venezuela has long claimed Guyana’s approximately 61,600-square-mile Essequibo region as its territory, despite a U.S.-mediated 1899 Paris ruling involving Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, and Venezuela, subsequently affirmed by the International Court of Justice.

Venezuela’s agitation over Essequibo, which spans two-thirds of Guyana, increased significantly after Exxon Mobil discovered oil in the Stabroek Block off its shores in 2008 and began drilling in 2015.

The Punta Playa deposit contains an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the 21st century’s largest petroleum finds. It produces 900,000 barrels daily as of November 2025, according to Exxon Mobil. Venezuela, by comparison, has an estimated 300 billion barrels of oil reserves but only produces 1 million barrels per day.

In 2013, the Venezuelan navy boarded and impounded a survey ship operated by Anadarko Petroleum, an Exxon Mobil contractor, before releasing it. In 2018, Venezuela approached and “intercepted” an Exxon Mobil survey ship, according to the Guyanese foreign ministry, forcing it to abandon explorations.

In November 2023, Maduro announced a “people’s vote” to “respond to the provocations of Exxon, the U.S. Southern Command, and the president of Guyana” with a Dec. 3, 2023, referendum asking Venezuelans to annex Essequibo.

Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro holds Simón Bolívar’s sword as he speaks at a rally against a possible escalation of U.S. actions toward the country, at Fort Tiuna military base in Caracas, Venezuela, on Nov. 25, 2025. Leonardo Fernandez Viloria / Reuters

A map shows the Stabroek Block, an oil and gas reservoir off the coast of Guyana. Venezuela has long claimed Guyana’s 61,600-square-mile Essequibo region, despite a U.S.-mediated 1899 Paris ruling. Illustrated by The Epoch Times

Venezuelans approved the measure, paving the way for the province of “Guayana Esequiba.” The Maduro regime portrayed the outcome as a mandate by voters united by a decades-long, nationalistic, cross-party issue.

The brewing crisis spurred the UK to dispatch a warship, a U.S. Army delegation to visit Guyana, and the Pentagon’s Southern Command to begin joint flight operations with the Guyana Defence Force, actions that convinced Maduro to meet with Ali in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to sign the Argyle Accords and agree to de-escalate tensions.

But the Maduro regime has never complied with the Argyle Accords, instead amassing troops and military equipment along its border with Guyana, according to a March report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. How Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, now sworn in as Venezuela’s acting president, will proceed in honoring the Argyle Accords is uncertain.

Increasing Provocations

In February 2024, less than two months after the Maduro–Ali pact, Venezuelan naval and air aggression forced Guyana to place a moratorium on oil exploration in the western reaches of the Stabroek Block.

In April 2024, Maduro signed a bill that formally established the Venezuelan state of “Guayana Esequiba” and began enlarging a base on Anakoko Island at the confluence of the Cuyuni and Wenamu rivers. Guyana claims that Venezuela has illegally occupied the island since 1966.

Vehicles drive past a sign indicating the entrance to Tumeremo, the Venezuelan-created administrative capital of Guayana Esequiba, on May 26, 2025. In April 2024, then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro signed a bill that formally established the Venezuelan state of “Guayana Esequiba” and began enlarging a base on Anakoko Island at the confluence of the Cuyuni and Wenamu rivers. Pedro Mattey/AFP via Getty Images

The provocations did not cease with Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025. The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs openly mocked Ali as “the Zelensky of the Caribbean” in a March 1, 2025, statement posted to social media, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That same day, an armed Venezuelan Guaiquerí-class patrol ship entered Guyana’s waters and approached the Liza Destiny, an Exxon Mobil vessel, demanding that the crew produce documents.

In late March 2025, Rubio traveled to Guyana.

“In my meeting with [Ali], we strengthened the economic and security ties between our two nations,” he wrote on X. “The United States stands with Guyana in support of its territorial integrity against the Maduro regime.”

A month before, in February, six Guyanese soldiers had been wounded along the Cuyuni River after suspected Venezuelan gang members opened fire. Similar events occurred in the same border area in May and August.

On May 25, 2025, Venezuela held regional and gubernatorial elections, including for “Guayana Esequiba.” Neil Villamizar, an admiral in the Venezuelan navy, was named governor after what the U.S. State Department called the “latest sham election” organized by the Maduro regime.

That same day, while commemorating the 59th anniversary of Guyana’s independence from Great Britain, Ali said Guyana was ready to defend its territory against Venezuela.

“[The] abuse of our airspace and our waterways by all kinds of criminal elements, all kinds of illegitimate trade [will no longer be tolerated],” Ali said in December 2025.

“We have to do this in partnership if we are to have a region that is safe for our children 30, 40, 50 years from now,” he said.

That partnership includes a revitalized U.S. presence in Guyana that predates its independence but that has gained renewed relevance as the Trump administration refocuses the nation’s foreign policy on backyard backwaters neglected for decades. With Maduro awaiting trial in New York City, it is uncertain whether the Rodríguez administration will continue to press its territorial claims.

Aerial view of ships carrying machinery on the Demerara River in Georgetown, Guyana, on Aug. 29, 2025. The United States established two bases in the former British Guiana: a naval air station at Makouria, 20 miles from Georgetown, and an air base about 25 miles south of Georgetown along the Demerara River. Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP via Getty Images

Renewed US Presence

As part of the March 1941 Lend-Lease Act with the UK, the Soviet Union, France, China, and other Allied nations, the United States secured 99-year leases to ports and airfields across the Caribbean and elsewhere in exchange for food, oil, munitions, mothballed warships, and other assistance.

The United States established two bases in British Guiana: a naval air station at Makouria, 20 miles from Georgetown, to patrol for German U-boats menacing the Panama Canal, and an air base about 25 miles south of Georgetown along the Demerara River.

The air base, Atkinson Air Force Base, was a key transit point for U.S. aircraft, troops, and supplies heading to Africa and Europe. It was also the pivot for the “Green Project,” which the War Department described as “one of the greatest airborne troop movements in history,” with thousands of GIs passing through on their way home at war’s end.

The United States unilaterally suspended the leases in 1949. Atkinson is now Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Guyana’s biggest commercial airport, adjacent to the Guyana Defence Force’s Camp Stephenson headquarters. Makouria Naval Air Station is now Guyana’s Jungle and Amphibious Training School.

An aerial view shows the Stabroek Market in Georgetown, Guyana, on Sept. 2, 2025. A U.S. delegation met with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali on Dec. 9, 2025, and returned to Washington with an agreement to expand military cooperation between the two countries. Joaquín Sarmiento/AFP via Getty Images

It is increasingly common to see U.S. military at both former U.S. installations and at Guyana’s air base near Eugene F. Correia International Airport on the Atlantic Coast; at Eteringbang on the Cuyuni River, where an all-weather 2,100-foot runway was recently built; and at Ramp Road Ruimveldt Naval Station in Georgetown, where a U.S. Southern Command-funded multimillion-dollar project financed numerous improvements.

In July 2023, Guyana hosted U.S. Southern Command’s Tradewinds joint exercises that included soldiers, airmen, and sailors from the United States, Mexico, Canada, the UK, France, and the 15 member states of the Caribbean Community alliance.

In late 2025, the Pentagon announced that components of the U.S. Army’s 800-man 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade would begin rotational deployments to Guyana “as demand for army advisors in the region continues to grow.”

In late January and early February 2024, 12th Air Force Maj. Gen. Evan Pettus, now deputy U.S. Southern Command commander, went to Georgetown to meet with Guyanese military commanders. In December 2024, Ali visited Southern Command headquarters near Miami.

In November 2025, in one of his tenure’s last overseas trips, Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, former Southern Command commander, met in Georgetown with senior government leaders.

Guyanese army soldiers carrying Russian-made AK-47 7.62mm caliber rifles march as they participate in joint military exercises with U.S. Southern Command troops at Camp Stephenson in Timehri, Guyana, on July 26, 2023. Keno George/AFP via Getty Images

Military Bases

After Maduro’s December 2023 summit with Ali in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a top Guyanese official who attended the meeting told The Associated Press that the Venezuelan leader was “convinced Guyana could host” a permanent U.S. military base, which would dissolve the Argyle Accords.

“We have not been approached by the United States to establish a military base in Guyana,” Guyanese Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said after a January 2024 visit by then-U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Daniel Erikson.

Since April 2024, Maduro has claimed that the United States operates “secret military bases” in Essequibo, justifying Venezuela’s increased military presence along its borders.

“We have information proving that in the territory of Guayana Esequiba, temporarily administered by Guyana, secret military bases of the (U.S.) Southern Command … a body of the CIA … have been installed,” he said, accusing the United States of “aggression” designed “to prepare for an escalation against Venezuela.”

Jagdeo, in a Dec. 19, 2025, news conference, said a military confrontation between the United States and Venezuela appeared imminent. However, unlike the year before, he did not respond to questions about U.S. forces operating from Guyana or whether there was renewed talk about the United States establishing military bases there.

Now-Guyanese Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo delivers a speech during the last day of a summit in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, on June 3, 2011. Jagdeo, in a Dec. 19, 2025, news conference, did not respond to questions about U.S. forces operating from Guyana or whether there was renewed talk about the United States establishing military bases there. Guy-Gervais Kitina/AFP via Getty Images

In the context of unfolding events, most analysts focus on Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, and nations to the south when pondering how the Trump Corollary will be unfurled.

“The Guyana aspect is one of the hidden gems in this, as far as the U.S. is concerned, because the U.S. has the majority of the offshore energy reserves off Essequibo,” said Gregory Copley, president of the Washington-based International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs publications.

“I think the Guyanese would welcome increased cooperation with the United States,” he told The Epoch Times.

Anders Corr, publisher at Journal of Political Risk and principal at Corr Analytics in Pittsburgh, who is also a contributor to The Epoch Times, said, “It would certainly make sense for Guyana to request a U.S. military base because that would give Guyana’s oil resources, other energy resources, a protection it won’t get anywhere else.”

“Trump is very much over spending money to protect other countries without getting something for it,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”So he would probably ask for some kind of a concession on the part of Guyana for that sort of protection. And he might very well get it.”